Harry Beanham.... an interesting chap who I've described in more detail in previous posts on this blog and you can find them by typing in "Harry Beanham" in the search facility over on the RHS of this blog....

Worth a look again....

Harry motorcycled all his life and had an interest in the 1920's in the ABC motorcycle and had at least one French version of this motorcycle...the ABC was designed by the Englishman Granville Bradshaw and the first photo is of great interest to me as the text on the back indicated that Harry visited the UK in 1927 taking his then ABC with him, named by HB..." Ziska II ".

The comment from Harry on the small print I've scanned is "At Reading, 1927 ( April) on way back from "Granville Bradshaw" run to London..."The registration for This ABC was DP4480, mostly visible on the front number plate and you'll see more of this in the following photos...Since setting this post up I spoken with David Beanham, Harry was his uncle ...David has been in contact with Harry's daughter Pam and they and now myself are pretty sure Harry never left Australia...The conundrum is who is riding the ABC in Reading, UK....perhaps a friend of Harry's. Harry calls this motorcycle ZiskaII which tends to indicate he may have bought it off this chap/friend...

No text with this pic....

The text says....Ziska II with Fairie Queen up! (July 1926), then perhaps later penciled in ...Nosworthy Bridge....I Googled the bridge name and there is a Norsworthy Bridge in Dartmoor, UK and the photo I captured from the site and below, taken in May 2011 by Innes Spanbauer to who I acknowledge credit for this photo, looks remarkably similar....

The text says...DP4480 as I first had her.... then later penciled in At The Rock, Yelverton. Again I made the assumption that Harry wrote on the back of the small photo, hence the "I first had her"....

Again a Google search reveals a Yelverton in Dartmoor area...

So perhaps Harry travelled to the UK to pick up a new ABC....pure speculation.

With Ziska II...camshaft troubles...Sept.1926.

Ziska II...tyre trouble, 1926.

The engine unit with "Taylor rockers"....of Diana ...Jan.1925.I have no other reference to the name Diana, which seems to refer to another of Harry's bikes...

Ziska II in the background...likely still in UK by the car registration number.

We are now in Australia...the reference to the Bendigo centre sets that...

Perhaps another of HB's ABCs..the registration is now 21679 and I believe could be South Australian. 19 Sept. 1926.

ABC rego number 21679, date...1926.

Again two ABCs ....

Again Harry with two ABC's, unsure where or when.

ABC rego 21679 but no information at two the lady and child ,where or when...

A Beanham photo, again with no details.....

Again a bit of a mystery, however the back was dated....5th April 1920.Finally the pic below seems out of sequence, was with his stuff and I guess could be his parents...

My next Beanham post will be his photos from the early 1960's of many of these motorcycles that he kept, plus others acquired over the years.... Broughs, Harleys and so on...

Monday, May 21, 2012

At this moment in time, the Velobanjogent is like a "one legged tap dancer".....so much to do with three blogs to set up weekly,and little time to do it, so some research for another technical item from my literature is temporarily on "the back burner" and this post is a selection of photos from a folder on my computer hard drive titled "my pictures".....actually this folder is where all the good stuff is...

But these are not cataloged and some I've no information on who they are or when the photo was taken...

But they make interesting viewing.....

Enjoy them....

1936 German GP/The GP of Europe....Tyrell-Smith #92,Excelsior the eventual winner, overtakes the Italian Pigorini at the Hohenstein-Erntthal circuit.

Want to know more....chase up a copy of Paul Ingham's "Excelsior, the racing years"

An intriguing early photo that I have no details for...

Bob Foster, A2, during a 1946 scramble. Larry Devlin from Northern Ireland emailed me with the comment..."The photo was taken in Verviers, Belgium in August 1946, and riding A1 is Bill Nicholson ( Billy Nick) from Northern Ireland....thanks Larry...DQ

Cecil Sandford on a Velocette MOV racer in 1953 at Eppynt.

Dave Jenkins, well known Australian road racer in the late 1930's/late 1940's on his 1935 Mk.1 KSS road bike.

Another evocative photograph showing an untidy start to an event on 4th July 1949 at Haddenham airfield circuit.

Australian Orrie Salter during the 1962 sidecar TT in the IOM. Salter later retired during the event.

Oran Park circuit, south of Sydney, now a housing estate...Noel Manning aboard his Hillman Imp engined outfit. 5th November 1967.

Australian Ted Carey, Bathurst 1952 on what appears to be a MOV Velocette. Ted by then had his special 250 DOHC MOV based racer and I suspect this was a bike he brought along to do some practice on.

My old Velocette Thruxton, bought new by me in Feb.1967 and sold to the pictured rider, Tony Keene. The photo appears to be at an Australian Velocette OC National Rally at Bundanoon in 1986.

And the following photo,is not motorcycle oriented and taken by me as a youth in the early 1950's on a trip with my Uncle and Aunt to Canberra. Taken outside the National War Memorial, it shows a Japanese midget submarine.

There was an attack in Sydney Harbour by three of these subs... one escaped and was lost off the coast, recently the wreck site was discovered.

In earlier posts I presented a selection on photos taken by Austrian photographer Artur Fenzlau during practice and racing on a hill climb circuit on the outskirts of Vienna, Austria on 17th October 1936....

Superb, interesting photographs and I acknowledge the copyright to the family of the late Artur Fenzlau and the Technical Museum of Austria in Vienna, who hold the original negatives and digitised them for our enjoyment...

See the earlier posts by typing "Artur Fenzlau" in the search facility on the RHS of this blog....

Friday, May 4, 2012

I've featured Motometer and their instruments used on BMW motorcycles to date....see over to the RHS in the search area and type in Motometer for these previous posts......

This post will be my last on BMW with Motometer instruments and I'll do one more in the future on the so called "Earles Forked" BMW with VDO instruments. So this post features the R45, R65 and R65LS instruments which were 100mm diameter nominal with a black anodised bezel rim rolled in place to seal the instruments.

The speedometer generally had the trip reset up into the glass of the speedo with a small rubber boot trapped in place by a capped plastic sleeve with a thread and nut.....funnily I never measured this.some early ones had the reset at the back of the instrument and used a plain glass...this was a better arrangement as the small rubber boot over the reset eventually splits and lets water into the speedometer.Internally most metal parts are unplated and so rust..... The tachometer was electronic and used the same movement as the BMW/7 series although the circuit board differed in that it was round, nominally about 100mm in diameter, external and secured by a plastic cover held in place by three PK type screws.

Despite the note on the photo from a BMW catalogue above..the binnacle is the same for the R45, and R65 variants.

The speedometer was in 120mph or 200kph dial scales, but 180kph for the R45 and the rear final drive ratio dictated the calibration factor which is displayed on the dial face as w=xxxx.

There were special 85mph dials made for the US market during the Reagan era oil crisis knee jerk reaction when all new cars and motorcycles had to have only an 85mph speedometer...the thought was you'd drive slower and save fuel....

Speedometer exploded drawing....

Electronic tachometer exploded view....

Trip reset exploded view....

BMW R65LS....

View of R65 and R65LS instrument cluster.

The calibration factor is w=773.

This means the speedometer cable rotates 773 times for every kilometer travelled.

So if the cable rotates at 773 times per minute, the speedometer will read 60kph.

So if you use a tester, the speedo of the input cable is 773tpminute to show 60kph on the dial face...

Below are some notes from my days in business and photos, used elsewhere in other Motometer posts by me, but relevant to these instruments...

Acknowledgement of items used in this Blog from my archive...

I often feature items from older Motorcycle magazines, including photographs and other drawings, cartoons etc in my Blog. Where possible I acknowledge their source. These items are often from "MotorCycle" and "MotorCycling", and the current copyright holders are Mortons Motor Cycle Media. I thank them for their use.

Where other sources are used such as Fox Photos, Keystone Press and other now defunct press agencies from the UK and elsewhere I attempt to acknowledge their source.

You are free to use any item from my Blog, but PLEASE give credit to the source.

DQ on his Velo Special

Velo Thruxton at speed

About Me

I've motorcycled since the early 1960s...both in Australia, the USA,NZ and UK to where my long suffering wife and I rode a 1972 BMW R50/5 motorcycle via the overland route through Asia in 1974. Careers in Animal Physiology and Automotive Instruments and now finally semi retired into music...as a banjoist in Trad./Dixieland Jazz bands.
Life for me is very interesting......